


Hands

by TWDObsessive



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: A study in Rick's hands, Comfort/Angst, Demisexuality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Holding Hands, M/M, POV Daryl Dixon, POV First Person, Pining, Rutting, Soulmates, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 08:56:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8743552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TWDObsessive/pseuds/TWDObsessive
Summary: Alexandria just fought off the walker infestation and Rick sits on the porch after learning that Carl will survive the gunshot.  Daryl sits with him and comes to some realizations about his feelings for the other man.From the following prompt by 1lostone:Hands.  Daryl is shocked when he notices how capable Rick's hands are. How he uses them for good and sweet and to kill,how they move, and flex, and are soft when they hold Judith, but can be ruthless when they are used to protect anyone in his family.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [1lostone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/1lostone/gifts).



> Bad news- I have writers block!  
> Good news- Before I got writer's block, I finished a 40k+ long fic last week that will start posting on Monday.  
> Bad news- The aforementioned long fic is really... different. And you might hate it.  
> Good news- I tried to write this little one-shot to fight off the writer's block.  
> Bad news- This may also suck.
> 
> Unbeta'd because my wonderful beta is sifting through 40,000 words of Dom/sub fluff at the moment so that posting can start on Monday.
> 
> Thanks to everyone on tumblr who sent me a prompt when I asked. And thanks to 1lostone who gave me the prompt that got me writing! (also thanks to fandom-trash-aus on tumblr for the soulmate concept that I kinda incorporated into this too)

It’s sudden and unexpected when I first realize that I want Rick’s hands on me. It’s surprising mostly because I never wanted anyone’s hands on me. Not any of the women that Merle used to drag home when I was younger and not any of the men at the gay bars I’d tried going to hoping to figure out why I didn’t want the women. But I didn’t want the men either. I didn’t want anything. I was an absolute freak of nature for not wantin’ what the rest of the world found so powerfully important. Never heard of no one that don’t want nothin’. Yet here I’ve been all my life, nothing making me stir in the ways other people stir. Not interested in anyone’s gentle touches, not craving anyone’s attention or affection. My focus has always been on just getting from one day to the next, surviving. 

Now is when I _should_ just be focusing on survival. It’s the goddamn apocalypse. I should be outside these walls hunting every second I’m awake because there are people to feed and the pantries are getting slimmer and slimmer of old-world food every day. But instead of being out at looking for protein for these people that are now my family, I am sitting and killing time, wasting time, next to Rick on the porch just to be near him. Just to feel his warmth against me and admire his hands. Because Rick is the one person I found that is different. The one whose hands I want, whose touch I crave and whose body I want to know in a way I’ve never known anyone else’s. In a way I’ve never _wanted_ to know anyone else’s.

His hands rest on his dirty jeans- manly, strong with dirt and blood stains that will never wash away, not after this life and all they’ve had to do. He touches me sometimes. A hand on the back while we’re talking, fingers grazing over bruises after run-ins with walkers, looking for bites or scratches. His hands are shaking as we sit there quietly in the dim starlight from the moonless night above us. He is relieved that Carl survived a shot in the head. The chances had been so slim, but those hands scooped the boy up and got him to safety. The same hands that then went out into Alexandria’s over-run streets and hacked at walker after walker after walker until every finger of his right hand had calluses from the hatchet… and every walker in the town was dead.

There is a mountain of work ahead of us. The streets are littered with bodies after Rick, and his hands, encouraged the entire town to fight for their lives. Daybreak would bring the next stage of the battle, the clean-up. Rick has barely registered that I am here sitting down next to him and that’s okay. I know him. I know how lost he gets at times like this. I watch as he runs his hand through his hair and lays it back down on his jeans. There’s a scar along the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and I remember it like it was yesterday, trying to show him how to string my crossbow. That was the first and last day of Rick’s crossbow lessons. I smile at the memory of that moment back at the prison. It was easier times and I miss what we had there. It was less crowded, less suffocating, less complicated.

My eyes stay on Rick’s hands. Several knuckles are still scraped up from his fight with Pete. I think about the things those hands have done- killing the living now and not just the dead if they pose a threat. And I think of them holding Judith, comforting Carl, putting a hand on my shoulder when I returned to the prison without Merle. He has a splotch of blood on his hand in the shape of a star in the exact same spot where I have my star tattoo. Is that a sign? Could Rick be the one I’ve been waiting for? Could he be the reason I’ve never wanted hands before... because I’d been waiting only for his?

Without thinking, I reach over and wipe at the star-shaped smudge and he jumps a little like he was just noticing the company.

“Daryl,” he says when he looks at me. “Carl…”

“He’s fine, Rick,” I say. “He’s gonna be fine. Remember Denise told you that?” He nods at the reminder and he twists his hand and latches onto mine like lovers in a movie holding hands in the rain. And when my hand is firmly gripped in his, I know that I am Rick’s. I want his hands everywhere and I want to be everything he needs from me.

“I’ve been worried about you, Daryl. Where’ve you been?”

“‘S’ok,” I say, my eyes still on our interlocking fingers, “I’m back. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

My heart pounds in my chest at the feel of another person, at the feel of my body _wanting_ that other person. This is unfamiliar territory for me and I rub my thumb against his hand to feel more of him as he squeezes it tighter. I have grown closer to Rick than I have been to any other person on this planet. And I love him in ways that I never knew I could.

“I think I need you,” he whispers. 

“You can take anything from me, Rick. I know you know that.”

He stands and pulls me up with him by that strong hand that still holds mine. “You never been together with anyone since I known yah, Daryl. Why?”

“Ain’t ever been no one but you. And you been busy,” I answer honestly, because there ain’t no other way I can respond at the moment. Not with his hand gripping desperately to mine like I was all that was tethering him to Earth.

“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” he says softly. “No. I mean, I don’t want to be without _you_ tonight.”

“You won’t be,” I answer, because I know I’ll follow wherever his hand takes me. We walk hand-in-hand back to the home that is now without Carl in it. The others are asleep already, exhausted from the battle. He walks me past the couch that is mine and takes me up to his room and closes the door. 

“Life isn’t long enough to sit and let things I want slip through my hands because I don’t understand them,” he says.

“What don’t you understand?” I ask as I loosen my grip on his tight hold. He lets my hand go, but watches the fingers as they untwine and fall away.

“I don’t understand why I want to touch you, why I want you to hold me, why I want to be with you. I’ve never… I didn’t know I could want that. Never thought about another man like that before. Not ever.”

“I never thought about _anyone_ like that before. Not ever,” I said softly. “It’s only ever been you. I want you to touch me. I’ve wanted it for a long time now.”

He takes a step closer and puts that hand, still grimey with kills and chaos, on my cheek and he leans in slowly and presses his full, soft lips against mine in a gentle kiss like the touch of a butterfly landing on a flower petal. It was a feather light touch, barely there like whispers or shadows. 

Want is new for me. I am more familiar with need. The need to eat, to survive, to move forward. But want is not something that I know how to handle. I want his mouth wherever he will put it. I want his eyes on me, his hands, his body against mine. I want to hear my name on his tongue. It is then that I realize how much more powerful want is than need. With need, you have no choice. With want, you choose it with such conviction that it encompases every part of you- mind, body and soul. 

When he pulls away, the kiss still dancing on my lips like a ghost, he puts his hands on my chest and runs them slowly down until they stop at the button of my jeans. He looks at me for permission and I nod to him and watch as he undoes my pants with strong but shaking fingers. Suddenly we start moving like we are choreographed, removing shirts and shoes and pants until all we are wearing is the dirt, blood and sweat from the long, exhausting night. He looks at me, eyes raking over every part of my body and I shiver at the attention. He is beautiful in front of me, stripped naked of anything that isn’t just simply Rick. I am harder than I have ever been and the rush of blood leaving my brain to fill my length makes me dizzy. 

I put my hands in his hair and steal a kiss and as I do I feel his hands slide around my waist and pull my body against his. Being tight to him, skin against skin, is like being born into a new world. “I have no fucking idea what I’m doing, Rick. Ain’t never fooled around none before,” I say quietly. 

He backs me up to the bed and we climb onto it and lie down, Rick above me and grinding his hips against me as his tongue slips between my lips and I taste him. He is salt and blood and strength on my tongue. There is dampness between us as the precome coats our bellies and I feel the impending pleasure starting to build like embers turning quickly into a wildfire. I’ve masterbated, probably not as much as normal people, but I knew how good it can feel. At least I thought I knew, because having another person’s skin, having _Rick’s_ skin against me at this moment was like the parting of grey skies, the first ray of sunshine after a dark storm.

Rick smells of sweat and power and sex and I inhale him deeply between kisses as his hands pull me tight to him, open palms rubbing up and down my hips as he moves against me. We come at the same moment and the world blackens at the edges of my eyesight from the power of the first orgasm I ever had with another person. I do not want to let go. I can not imagine how people can have this and then get up and walk away. I don’t ever want to move again. I don’t ever want to be without his hands on my skin.

“Daryl,” Rick whispers into my ear as he slides off me and wraps an arm around me, his head on my chest. “Will you stay here with me?”

“Yes,” I answer, because I am putty in his strong, firm hands. And will go wherever he leads me.

**Author's Note:**

> My muse has been on vacation. That BITCH. Hopefully she'll be back in full force once we hopefully see both our boys on screen Sunday night. Normally I have a thousand plot bunnies running through my head all at once but I seem to be running on empty. Feel free to pass on any ideas, especially for one-shots to help me get over this hump of being uninspired!


End file.
